Tag: downtowncc

We swung by B'Sghetti's tonight for dinner, as we do once or twice a month. But this time we noticed something a little different. B'Sghetti's had always had three dining rooms, because of the way the building they're in is laid out. The main dining room is where we always sit, but on really busy days they open a second room that is up front looking out onto Carson Street. And on really really busy days, there is a third dining room set at the back of the restaurant, sunken down a few feet. I haven't seen anybody use that room for quite a while now, so more or less it was empty space that they could use for just about anything.

So tonight when we went in, we noticed that the third dining room has been transformed into a nightclub, the plan:b micro lounge (website and MySpace). Black leather couches curve around the perimeter of the room, with a wooden dance floor in the middle. Everything is lit with blacklight throughout. And the lounge is conveniently located right next to B'Sghetti's bar, of course.

Fuzzy cell phone pic

plan:b opens every Friday and Saturday night at 10pm. It seems like they're trying to inject a little nightlife into a downtown Carson that's mostly dead after dark, except for the casinos. I think this is just the kind of thing downtown needs. So let's get the word out.

The dress code

The Carson Times has a report on how the summer activites in downtown Carson, like the Farmer's Market, Fridays @ Third, and the Pop-Up Park, have been doing better than expected.

29 vendors -- including the most Nevada growers at a time in any currently running market in Northern Nevada -- will man their booths for nearly 1,900 expected customers.

Live music, table seating and the ease of a weekend morning add to the 14 farmers and 15 boutique vendors who are there each week through Oct. 4 at the Third and Curry Street parking lot in downtown Carson City.

It seems like everything is going right all at once here, and 2008 is the year that the revitalization of downtown Carson has really stepped into high gear. I think the focus on Curry Street as the base for all these activities and events is one of the biggest things that has led to the success. Carson Street is a losing proposition. Even after the freeway is built, traffic on Carson is still going to be moderately heavy, and all the improvements that have been talked about are going to depend on a city that is currently broke coming up with enough money. So even if things go well, we're looking at several years before Carson Street will be fit for pedestrian life. Curry Street, on the other hand, is ready now. I think making it the true heart of downtown Carson was a brilliant idea.

Crossposted from the WNHPC Blog.

With the recent news that the Downtowner Motor Inn in Carson City may have new owners soon, Joe Childs was good enough to send in a scan of another old postcard of the motel. This one is dated 1969, and shows the motel when it was only seven years old.

This dusk shot almost makes the place seem inviting. The glow of the sign and the porch lights, as well as the Best Western crown, seem to have pulled in a lot of customers. Joe scanned the back of this one too, showing the message from “Poppy” to Miss Kristen Hendershot of Orange, Calif.

From the Nevada Appeal:

The Downtowner Motor Inn lost its business license Thursday at the city board of supervisors' meeting but will remain open as a new owner takes over the motel that was shut down in 2005 before reopening last year.

The potential new owners, the Shearer family, are working with the city to take over the motel now. No one will be asked to move out during the transition, city staff said.

Shearer said he is working with the city to find the best use for the hotel. He might keep it as the Downtowner, have a hotel chain take it over or give the land to the next door Children's Museum of Northern Nevada to use for expansion.

Dave Morgan also has coverage from a couple of days ago.

I'm sure Carson City will be considering the motel building to house the new library. But I've said before that this motel needs to be torn down. Figuring out what to do with the land is tougher. Leaving it as open space would be nice, because pictures I've seen from before the motel was built show a big open area with great views of the Civic Auditorium next door, and it would be nice to have that back. But "open space" is hardly a good use of premium land in a downtown area.

This land was originally part of the railroad depot, which still stands across the street. The train tracks and the passenger platform took up most of what is now Washington Street, but mail and delivery trucks would park where the Downtowner now stands so that goods could be offloaded directly off the backside of the train. This parking area can be seen in the photo below, from 1949.

The railroad tracks were torn up in 1950, and the lot stayed vacant until 1962 when the motel was built. Maybe that corner is going to enter a new era soon.

The news is floating around that the Citibank building at Telegraph Square, one of the big boxy eyesores in downtown Carson, is going to be sold off soon. Wells Fargo is taking over Citibank's operations in Northern Nevada, and this building is part of the deal. Since there's already a Well Fargo branch nearby, they'll be shuttering this one. And since they'll no longer need the building, that means they'll get rid of it by selling it.

So this is where the opportunities come in. Telegraph Square, and all of what is being called the "Curry Street Promenade", has been seeing a lot of redevelopment lately, and a large parcel like this coming up for sale is exciting because there are so many possible uses for it. The consensus in the article seems to be that it needs to be torn down just because it's so ugly, and I can't say I disagree with that. But then what do you build on the site? Housing and retail seem to be the top two choices, or more likely some mix of the two. I could also see a parking garage going on this site, with retail shops facing the street on the ground floor.

Or the building could be remodeled. There's a basic structure here that serve as a good base for transforming it into something architecturally exciting. The building as it is now could be reconfigured to have retail on the ground floor and housing or offices above, maybe with an addition in the back. The look of it could be updated to something that fits more with the character of the neighborhood, and it could be a real part of Telegraph Square instead of the big boxy obstacle that it is now.

The kicker, though, is that it's not up to us. As with all of these redevelopment projects, there would have to be a developer with vision that came in and bought the building, and was willing to take a risk on downtown. The most likely outcome is that whoever buys it will keep it mostly the same, and lease out the space as offices, most of which will sit vacant. If it sells at all.

It's easy to be pessimistic, but things like the Firkin and Fox give me hope. What do you think will happen with the Citibank building?

This morning Sam and I went to the Saturday Farmer's Market, at Third and Curry streets, then took a stroll across the highway to the Capitol Plaza. In a summer when I thought I would have plenty of time to go on downtown walks, I've hardly done any, so it was good to get out and do one. Plus it's both fun and frustrating to go photowalking with a four-year-old, because he has very firm ideas of where he wants to go next, and they rarely match up with where you want to go. Including going back to the car when you're done. But we enjoyed ourselves.

All the pictures can be found at Flickr. Here are some of the highlights.

At the Farmer's Market. Corn and cabbages and carrots and strawberries.

Sammy on the lawn.

The Tribute to Nevada Miners statue, dedicated in 1983 (Compare to this).

The Nevada Law Enforcement Officers Memorial. Inscribed with the name of every Nevada peace officer killed in the line of duty.

Kit Carson, exploring the wilderness of Nevada on his horse.

He looks kind of tired.

Abe Curry, the "father" of Carson City, carrying a set of blueprints that he used to build one of the buildings in town.

The Nevada Supreme Court building. Built in 1991, it's the newest of the buildings in the Capitol complex.

Sam peering through Hannah Clapp's 1875 wrought-iron fence surrounding the Capitol.

The front entrance the to Capitol.

These storefronts on Carson Street could use a little TLC. Their postwar stylings stand out like an ugly duckling, even in a downtown that already has no sense of architectural unity. Hopefully with all the work being done to beautify Third Street lately, some of that will spill over and these stores will get a needed facelift.

The Firkin and Fox Pub in the St. Charles Hotel has been a raging success, and is playing a large role in making the Third Street area a real destination.

Comma Coffee next door is a nexus for the Carson City arts scene. Probably the most "indie" of all the independent coffee houses in Carson.

This clock in front of the Legislature Building was donated in 2005 by the Rotary Club of Carson City.

Sam stands proud next to the clock.

These flower baskets along Carson Street are new this year. Purchased by the Firkin and Fox, they bought enough to stretch the whole block between Third and Fourth streets, even down here in front of Comma Coffee and Caterpillar's Hookah Lounge.

The vacant lot between Comma Coffee and the St. Charles Hotel has been turned into a public square, a shady little park right on Carson Street.

This morning was the first downtown farmers market for the summer. It was held at Third and Curry streets, in the city-owned parking lot right across the street from the new Bella Fiore Wines. The market was a little small, only taking up two rows of the parking lot, but there were a lot of people. A few vendors were selling fresh produce, and the others were selling coffee, chocolate, plants, and arts and crafts. There was even a band, playing live music.

There wasn't a whole lot to do at the market, but there were some good fruits and veggies, and a good excuse to get out and go downtown. I can see the market getting bigger over the summer, especially later in the year as more crops become available.

This event is also the showcase for the new "Curry Street Promenade". The city has decided that the freeway is never going to be finished (and NDOT's budget was just cut again), so betting on Carson Street is a losing horse. So the city instead is focusing on fixing up Curry Street, and making it the cultural center of Carson City and the place where downtown events are held. It seems to be a good idea; Curry is a much more inviting street than Carson, and for more reasons than just the traffic. There are more trees and old houses along Curry, and it's a nicer walk. They've put together a whole list of reasons for you to come down to Curry Street this summer.

So I think the farmers market was a success. It will never be as big a deal as ones in some other cities, like the Pike Place Market or the Los Angeles Farmers Market. But for Carson City it's not bad. Here are some more photos.

The Nevada Appeal has a story on the market too.

The Carson Times (run by those interlopers at the Reno Gazette) is doing far more Future of Downtown coverage than the Appeal is. Just yesterday they had two stories, Hot town, summer in the city, and Workgroups focus on retooling Curry Street corridor and beyond, about the Curry Street Promenade, the downtown library, even options for adding more high-density housing to the downtown area.

Carson Times has a photo gallery of the Curry Street Promenade. Apparently Curry Street is being slowly redeveloped, partly just to make Curry Street look better, but partly to try out a few of the design concepts that the city wants to use on Carson Street after the freeway is finished. What I notice about this Curry Street photo gallery is that many of the improvements are coming from private enterprise, not from the city. There are photos of the Firkin and Fox, and the new Bella Fiore Wines, and the new back patio that Doppelgangers recently completed. This is the way it should be. The city can make the streets and sidewalks look nice, but it's up to these businesses to make people want to come downtown. And we're actually seeing some nice stuff happening in that arena. So I'm optimistic for the future of downtown, and maybe by the time the freeway traffic gets off the street, we really will have a downtown worthy of standing on its own.

Carson Times: Don't give up on that new Carson City Library just yet. After the failed boondoggle that was the city trying to acquire the old Post Office on Plaza Street, it sounds like Carson is pursuing a more reasonable plan of building a brand new library building, probably on the site of the old V&T Shops one block north. Reasonable, but expensive. The library has no money to put up new buildings with, in fact they've recently had to cut hours and staffing levels. But it sounds like the Federal government has programs in place to help with redeveloping the neighborhoods that their buildings are located in. So maybe the Feds would give the city money to help out with building a new library and improving that part of town. Which is a good thing, because the city sure doesn't have any money to do any of this.

That whole part of town has been designated the "Roundhouse District", referring to the V&T Shops that used to be on the empty lot at Ann Street. The funny thing is that the shops were never called the "Roundhouse", because it wasn't round. It was square, so it was properly called just an enginehouse. I think it was usually known as the shops, or the Old Stone Fort.

There's a lot of land around there that can be improved, room for parks, fountains, even an amphitheater. If all these plans come to fruition it could really transform that part of town into something great. Of course, that's a lot of ifs. And plans in Carson City have a way of going from "if" to "whatever happened to", so maybe none of this will ever come to pass.